Salary in Berlin – this is how much you should get paid

Salary in Berlin is always a difficult topic to address. It’s hard to talk about it with your boss or with your fellow employees. In general, people also tend to keep the figure to themselves, probably because they are afraid of being underpaid, overpaid or even making other people jealous. I guess it depends on your cultural background as well. Where i come from, you tend to keep it to yourself.

However, this is wrong as it sometimes plays out in favor of the employer, who takes advantage of the lack of information to negotiate a lower salary than what you deserve. This post is aiming at correcting this in favor of you, the employee. Better informed, you will be in a better situation to negotiate your next wage or your next raise.

Incomplete information plays in favor of the employer during negotiation, so stay smart and do your research

Unfortunately, there won’t be the exact data fitting to your profile, field of expertise, level of experience, qualifications or diplomas. However, gathering a few figures will help you a lot to decide how much you should ask for. Try to think those as a way to put your self somewhere on a graph, like this :

How much experienced people should get paid in Berlin

A 2016 study by Stepstone, a leading job-board for skilled workers & managers, has revealed some interesting facts about current state of affairs depending on the industry. It gives away a simple fact already: a salary in Berlin is lower than the national average.

Industry

Berlin average (€)

National average (€)

Engineers & Technical jobs

49 737

57 610

IT

51 233

57 862

Marketing

42 937

49 080

Sales

46 037

54 973

HR

42 694

52 618

Finance & Controlling

48 975

55 892

Purchasing & Logistics

43 602

50 788

Care & Therapy

29 895

33 446

Medical professions

57 717

64 110

Average All

42 865

52 000

Before you get spooked by the figures, bear in mind that those numbers are taken from relatively experienced profiles, including commissions & other additional bonuses.

What could explain such a gap in wages between Berlin & the rest of the country ?

Lower cost of living could be a reason (at least, it used to be the case). Also the city’s economy is more & more driven by start-ups which tend to pay employees less, mechanically reducing the average wage, especially for sales, marketing & HR. Let’s not forget the impact of expats such as us. There has been a massive influx of well educated profiles coming from abroad leading to an increased competition between applicants. An abundance of qualified workers tend to keep the average salary in Berlin down too. That holds true for other high-skilled workers coming from other parts of Germany as well.

How much junior profiles should get paid in Berlin

Are you only starting your career and looking for a junior position ? Another study from 2014 by the same company is having a closer look at the numbers for young professionals.

For junior roles with academic backgrounds, this is the average starting salary in Berlin:

Industry

Berlin average (€)

Engineers & Technical jobs

41 933

IT

41 933

Marketing

31 106

Sales

33 899

HR

34 226

Finance & Controlling

37 323

Purchasing & Logistics

43 413

Average (All)

37.760

Again here, bear in mind that those numbers are including commissions & other additional bonuses. The data is taken from profiles with less than 2 years of experience. No surprise here as well; the more technical your profile is, the better you chances are to get a good salary in Berlin at the end of the month.

For junior roles, the starting salaries are also more dependent on the size of the company

There is an additional component for young professionals to consider when starting your work life. The difference is of salary in Berlin is even greater depending on how big your company is. Bigger companies tend to agree to a higher starting salary as this other study from 2012 points out.

Company size

Average starting salary (€)

1 to 10 employees

35 000

10-99 employees

37 000

100 to 999 employees

39 000

1000+ employees

42 000

Those are nation-wide figures so apply the usual 10-15% decrease to obtain a Berlin-realistic value.

How much should i get paid when i am developer

The excellent job matching platform for programmers has released a study in April 2018 focusing on tech jobs in Germany. There is data about Berlin too by maximum, average and minimum for different roles. Quite relevant stuff. The infographic is way too long to feature here but here is the original post. Here the key insights though:

Tech professionals with 8 or more years experience earn more on average in Berlin than they do in Hamburg.

On average, the highest paying tech role in Germany for engineers with 6 to 8 years experience is DevOps.

Developers with 0 to 2 years experience earn on average 43,300€ in Berlin, 49,400€ in Munich and 43,100€ in Hamburg.

How much should i get paid when i don’t speak German so well

This might get closer to a figure you had in the back of the mind. However, we have to dig a bit deeper here and not fool ourselves. We all know that when you don’t speak German fluently, the chances to get a good salary decrease a little bit more. The reason is simple; there are far more expats in Berlin that don’t speak German proficiently than expats who can indeed use German in the work place. As a result, even more people are fighting for those english-speaking-only jobs. (As mentioned here already: yes, the key to a real job & career is learning German.)

When you can’t use German in the workplace, the chances of a better wage will likely decrease

The closest data i could find to explore this particular sub-segment of people is a study from early 2016 made by another job-board startup-cvs.com. In this study, we learn more what people who want to work in start-ups expect to earn. The data sample is albeit less reliable because it focuses on start-ups profiles only and it’s an Europa-wide study. However, many people coming to Berlin who don’t speak German often end-up working for start-ups, so it stays relevant to a certain degree.

Here are the findings for this group:

Experience Level

Expected salary (€)

Junior roles

29 500

Senior roles

39 800

Manager positions

42 400

“Heads Of” positions

61 000

The study doesn’t say if those people got the pay cheque they were asking for.

On a more personal note, a tip or two :

I have had the opportunity in my career to be in the position of hiring workers, which leads me to give you the following observation : More often than you would think, applicants under-estimate their worth and set a lower salary expectation than what they could actually ask for. Just bear in mind that the figure you will ask during your interview is also a way for the recruiter to assess how your perceive your value, and whether or not you are confident in it.

Don’t get fooled by all the “perks” to compensate for a lower salary in Berlin. A free MacBook & all-you-can-eat breakfast do not replace a proper wage.

If some performance-based system is planned, make sure it’s also in the contract, with the right % or amount.

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, there is no single source to turn to so if you know one that’s relevant to Berlin & up-to-date, do let me know so i can add it here. I would also love your thoughts.

Why not posting in the comment section what you earn describing your role & level of experience & company size ? That might help others out.

Note : The minimum wage rule has been in place since 2015. At the time of writing this post, it’s too early to say the impact on your salary in Berlin, except that you can’t take a poorly paid internship anymore. Only enrolled students can do that now.

Tip 1: If you want to make research on a particular company to know how much they pay their employees, you can use employer review website such as Glassdoor and Kununu which has data from past and current employees as well as prospective candidates.

19 Comments

Just a comment about German skills and salary based on personal experience.

Unless you are required to interface with German customers/suppliers/contractors/etc, and all other things being equal, employers will end up taking the non-German speaking person because they don’t want to pay more for your German skills.

I also find the whole concept of “Gehaltsvorstellung” pretty strange und unintuitive. When companies decide to hire, there is already a budget set aside so they know how much they can / want to pay you already. If market value / contractual obligations were really the problem they could post a range to set the applicants’ expectations.

I guess the problem with posting the salary (range) could be that:

1) If a current employee is getting paid lower than the budget amount, he might end up asking for more, or simply quit when a better offer comes along. 2) There are always candidates who offer themselves at lower-than-budget/market salary.

I have to reply to this super-old comment because it is something that I am very passionate about.

Yes, it often is in your contract but THAT IS ILLEGAL! Your employer is not allowed to do that by German law! There are certain exceptions like in the case of top managers. There it would be bad for the company if the competition knew their salary. But the usual employee is allowed to talk about their salary to anyone they want!

Hey Sophie, do you have a source or specifics for this? I like the idea of organising _within_ companies to expose pay discrimination, but I’m not entirely sure if there’s legal protections for sharing your salary info with your colleagues, even if it’s expressly forbidden by the law.

Also for the junior data? I need a bit of help..I am applying for a job in a Stiftung, it’s an entry-level, the field is energy transition. I’m completely clueless on how much should I ask 😀 I have an MA.. Advice pls 🙂 (I have an internship and couple of months of work in a relevant insitution)

Hi, I am being interviewed at a company in berlin for junior data engineer and i have experience of around 3 years… what can I expect as a salry. The INTERVIEWERS have accepted my caliber n knowledge is bit higher acc to the job profile but since its a junior position how much can i expect ?

Prateek do your research yourself. You’re a “data engineer”, do you need help making a basic salary research? Or maybe your time is more important than ours? It’s funny “prateek” means “practical” in French but you are not very pratique.

Privacy Preference Center

Consent Management

If you leave a comment on our site you may opt-in to saving your name, email address and website in cookies. These are for your convenience so that you do not have to fill in your details again when you leave another comment. These cookies will last for one year.

Cookie policy

Required

If you have an account and you log in to this site, we will set a temporary cookie to determine if your browser accepts cookies. This cookie contains no personal data and is discarded when you close your browser.When you log in, we will also set up several cookies to save your login information and your screen display choices. Login cookies last for two days, and screen options cookies last for a year. If you select "Remember Me", your login will persist for two weeks. If you log out of your account, the login cookies will be removed.If you edit or publish an article, an additional cookie will be saved in your browser. This cookie includes no personal data and simply indicates the post ID of the article you just edited. It expires after 1 day.

Privacy policy

Required

You can check here how we handle your data

Required

Preserves users states across page requests and keep tracks of your cookie preferences. It's helping to track performance and user behavior on the website to improve on it.